Clause 4 - Rates of tobacco products duty
Finance Bill
10:45 am
Mr Oliver Letwin (West Dorset, Conservative)
The Financial Secretary is too intelligent for that. Surely, he recognises that we are debating whether the duty has been responsible for, on the one hand, decreasing the number of people who smoke—I accept his evidence that that is not increasing—or, on the other hand, whether it has been connected with the fact that the amount smoked by those who smoke has risen. If the duty were effective in either case, one would expect it to have been effective on the amount smoked by smokers, and not on determining the number of smokers. That suggests that, rather than duty, a third party cause, such as social convention among the young, is limiting the growth in the number of smokers. Is that not the case?